1. Field of the Invention
The current disclosure relates to a graphical task timer for timing tasks and a method for using such a timer to teach users, including children and adolescents, to keep to a routine and to perform certain tasks according to a pre-determined routine.
2. Background
Children and adolescents growing up often have problems managing their time. They often lack the discipline or sense of time to manage their daily routines, resulting in ignored chores and missed schedules. A common example is the morning routine, when a child has to get up in time and perform morning chores such as making the bed, taking a shower, brushing her teeth, getting dressed, have time for breakfast, and leave on time to catch the transportation to school. Often, the child develops a bad habit of running late every morning, resulting in constant nagging by the parents and a tense atmosphere in the household.
Indeed, many parenting experts have stressed the importance of establishing routines for young children to help them make daily transitions smoothly. These include the morning transition from home to school, the afternoon transition from school to after-school activities and home, and the evening transition from evening activities to bedtime. Establishing routines gives children a firm structure and routine to follow, and gives them the security in knowing what is expected of them. By helping children stay on-task, they can perform their activities independently without constant supervision or reminders, thus building self-esteem and self-reliance.
However, what often happens is children will deviate from their given routines and chores will be rushed, performed half-heartedly or skipped, requiring constant parental supervision or reminders. What is needed is a method to assist the children in monitoring their own progress during the fixed routine, and to help them develop good time-management skills.
A number of prior art devices have been developed to aid children in learning and adhering to a routine. U.S. Pat. No. 5,044,961 to Bruskewitz teaches a simple timer for teaching young children the concept of time. The timer includes a timing mechanism contained within a housing having a timer dial and activity selector. The timer dial permits selection of a duration of predetermined length and includes an indicator which moves in relation to a time scale to graphically illustrate the change in duration of length. The activity selector permits display of a graphic representation of the activity being timed or for which the child is waiting. However, only one activity symbol is ever shown in the window at any one time, and the activity symbol remains in a stationary position throughout the timed period. The shortcoming of this device in teaching time-management skills is that it doesn't relate individual activities and tasks to an overall routine, and timer can only time one activity before it has to be reset to time another.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,416,216 B1 to Haughey teaches a system to aid children or others in managing and understanding the concept of time and in remembering scheduled events. The disclosed event clock visually demonstrates the time during which at least one predetermined event is scheduled to occur. The event clock includes a timing mechanism, an indicator operatively connected to the timing mechanism, and preferably several event markers. Each event marker visually symbolizes a scheduled event and is disposed in relation to the indicator such that the indicator provides a signal during the time the event is scheduled to occur. The device disclosed comes configured with twelve event markers slots for holding event markers.
The Haughey device has a number of short-comings in teaching time management skills. One, the timed period is pre-divided into twelve event marker slots, with each slot representing 5 minutes or 10 minutes, depending on the timer used. However, this makes it difficult to use the device to schedule a larger number of events than twelve, or to schedule events that only occur for a short duration (for example, a number of events that only take one or two minutes). Further, the time indicator doesn't indicate the progress of the user in respect to the entire routine. If the user runs late with one task, the device offers no assistance on how the user might get back on track.
What is desired, therefore, is a device that is easily customizable for any fixed routine, and can assist a user on developing a good habit of performing set tasks on time.
What is also desired is a device that is simple to operate and understand, and can be adaptable for use for any age group from young children, to adolescents and even adults.
The device should be configurable for timing different pre-determined periods, including one hour and two hour intervals. The device should also be easily configurable to handle any number of events, even if the events are of short duration.
It is also desired that the device shows clearly “past-due”, “do it now” and “upcoming” time segments, to teach the user time management skills in how to deal with running late or running early in their routine.
It is further desired that a method for teaching time-management skills using this novel device be made available.